We allowed pretty much everything to become about money, David. But the money ate so much. Eroded so much. It's true elsewhere as well, but the difference is - this was the Citadel. And we turned it into Money Central, over here in North America.

And yes, now we'll see. It likely won't be pleasant. But people, and cultures, have surprising, often unseen, reserves. It's just that the Media, more fevered about money than almost anyone, wasn't going to put a camera on these other things. But they'll step forward now.

And we get to see how strong they are, eh? Same as Spain, Britain, Iceland, Japan, China, Ukraine. All you can say is... we'll see.

I wish we'd chosen to make this change an easier way though.

And nice to see Martin Jacques in the New Statesman. Thanks for that link.

Your title alone answers a lot of personal questions for me

"Money is always imaginary, in that it stands for something else."

Words are always imaginary too, by that standard. But we still speak of truth and lie.

Money is the medium of exchange in economic trade. The medium is not the message, but many have taken Marshall McLuhan to mean the opposite (he did say "the medium is the message" but that has to be understood in context). They have in effect monetized money, put a value on money itself. Instead of loving end goods, they end up loving money, and that's "the root of all evil". Similarly some religions caution against loving the symbol over the idea.

It's not that money is imaginary so much as it has real and imaginary components, it's complex. We can say that currency is symbolic, the question is - what is it that is symbolized by a greenback?